ACIM Daily Lesson 297 Forgiveness is the only gift I give. 1. Forgiveness is the only gift I give, because it is the only gift I want.
Forgiveness is the only gift I give.
Lesson 297
Forgiveness is the only gift I give.
1. Forgiveness is the only gift I give, because it is the only gift I want. ²And everything I give I give myself. ³This is salvation’s simple formula. ⁴And I, who would be saved, would make it mine, to be the way I live within a world that needs salvation, and that will be saved as I accept Atonement for myself.
2. Father, how certain are Your ways; how sure their final outcome, and how faithfully is every step in my salvation set already, and accomplished by Your grace. ²Thanks be to You for Your eternal gifts, and thanks to You for my Identity.
Jesus is bringing together several ideas that he has emphasized throughout the Course. First and foremost, forgiveness is the only gift I give because it is the only gift I want. Forgiveness is how we save the world and return Home, and I receive it through giving it. As Jesus has told us more than once, giving is receiving, and what I give, I receive. Therefore, I try to always only give what I truly want to receive. When I slip up and give fear or guilt, I ask the Holy Spirit to correct my error, and I choose again.
Here is my guide to choosing again and doing so without guilt.
It comes at the end of Chapter 5 in the Text.
6. Decision cannot be difficult. ²This is obvious, if you realize that you must already have decided not to be wholly joyous if that is how you feel. ³Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly, but can as actively decide otherwise. ⁴Be very firm with yourself in this, and keep yourself fully aware that the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. ⁵Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. ⁶Say this to yourself as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:
⁷I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.
⁸I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
⁹I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.
¹⁰I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.
¹¹I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.
If you would like to read about a specific instance in which I used this passage to move from fear to peace, click here.
Jesus reminds us that we make salvation ours as we accept the Atonement for ourselves.
In fact, he states clearly in several places that accepting the Atonement is our function. 5. The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself. (ACIM, T-2.V.5:1) The Atonement is God’s Plan for our salvation, and this plan is carried out through forgiveness. To clarify, I tend to think of forgiveness as letting go. For example, if I am angry, I forgive it and let it go. Another example would be if I think someone is guilty, I forgive the belief in guilt and let that belief go.
And finally, Jesus reminds us that our salvation is certain because it is of God. Every step is already set and accomplished through His grace. We had thought to create our own identity. Now we can be grateful that our identity is established by God in our creation. The outcome is certain, and I don’t want to dawdle in the illusion any longer. My feet are firmly on the Path, and I will not be distracted from it.
Forgiveness is what we are to do here. If you would like to learn more about forgiveness and how to practice it in your life, I offer a course through Pathways of Light, Healing Through Forgiveness. I offer this course one on one and in groups. If you are interested, click here to learn more.
Three years ago, I was struggling with a forgiveness opportunity. Here is what I wrote then.
Forgiveness is a good topic for me today. I understand that forgiveness is essential, and usually do pretty good at forgiving. Last year I had been judging the judges, and even though I knew this was an error that was keeping the ego active in my mind and making the world seem real, I just couldn’t seem to drop it.
This occurred on Facebook. I have run across three different people being extremely judgmental in the name of A Course in Miracles. I wanted to ask them if they have ever read the book. So here I am, making the same mistake they are making. I began to notice yesterday that I felt heavy and depleted.
I asked Jesus what it was all about, and he told me it was the judgment. He told me it was making the world seem real, just as worrying about my son was making that issue seem real. I made a decision right there that I had no use for judgment, and as soon as I did, everything changed. I felt love for the people involved. What I did was to just completely disregarded everything about them that is not real and true. I just love miracles! God, what a relief!
I’m not sure why I didn’t see the obvious. I saw in others what was in my mind. Normally, when I judge someone, I turn it around and ask Holy Spirit to heal my mind of what I saw as outside me. Maybe I was not clear about that yet. These days, I seldom hesitate to forgive my perceptions when they steer me away from my goal. And I never believe that someone else is my problem.
Regina’s Tips
What is the Real World?
Our special theme says, “The Holy Spirit has no need of time when it has served His purpose. Now He waits but that one instant more for God to take His final step, and time has disappeared, taking perception with it as it goes and leaving but the truth to be itself. That instant is our goal, …”
That instant is our goal. That is why we are on the spiritual path. That is why we do the practices that are part of Gentle Healing. Truth is the goal that lives in our hearts.
Today, take some unhurried time to review what you have written this week regarding your selected perception. As you read, notice your desire to follow the guidance that has come through your writing. Focus your attention on that desire. Through loving attention, it will expand. Sit in awareness and quietly be with your desire to follow guidance across the bridge to truth realization.
Forgiveness is the only gift I give.
Our lesson says, “Forgiveness is the only gift I give because it is the only gift I want. And everything I give, I give myself. This is salvation’s simple formula.”
Today is a day of realizing how deep we desire to let spiritual intuition guide “the way I live” as “I accept the Atonement for myself.”
What is the Atonement? Atonement means “reparation for a wrong,” with reparation meaning “the action of repairing something.”
In this case, wrong perception is what needs to be repaired. Wrong perception is the block to the real world and the block to truth. We accept the Atonement for ourselves by doing our part to heal wrong perceptions and by allowing the miracle to do its part to bring healing to completion.
My Thoughts
I looked at my perception that someone I love suffers and that I must suffer with him. Then I forgave that thought, finally. I let it go because this would be true only if the ego is right and the world is real and all we have. When I suffer for my those I love, this is all I am doing, reinforcing a lie in my mind.
I don’t know when I wrote this, but my mind was beginning to open.
The more I do these lessons, the more I see that each one offers me salvation if I choose to fully accept it. This one reminds me that forgiveness is all that I want, and I can have it by giving it. If I did only this on a consistent basis, I would awaken from the dream. How could I not? It took me twenty-six years to really understand what forgiveness is. Not because it is so hard to understand, but because I didn’t want it to be true. To understand that forgiveness undoes the idea that someone else is responsible and to blame and that I am always only forgiving myself was not a welcome realization.
Now that I am willing to be completely responsible for everything in my life, now that I am willing to let everyone and everything off the hook and see the world and my brothers as innocent, it all seems so simple and self evident that I see it was never a difficult concept to understand. It was just a hard concept to accept as true.
For one thing, I was afraid of being responsible because I thought it made me guilty. That is not true. I am 100% responsible and 0% guilty. Once I understood that being responsible doesn’t make me guilty, I was greatly relieved because I saw the infinite value of being responsible. I saw the power that it takes to create the illusion that the Son of God is powerless, so I know I hold the power within my mind to undo the belief and so undo its effects.
I no longer sit in my victimhood, praying for someone to rescue me from what others have done to me.
Now I find the whole idea of doing so completely insane. Thank you, God, for that clarity! It is not like discovering some great elusive truth so much as it is like suddenly opening my eyes and seeing what was always right before me.
That I receive what I give has been the same journey. I accepted the idea as being true, but it was meaningless to me for such a long time. Sure, I understood the words and understood the meaning of each individual word, but when you put it together into a sentence, you lost me.
I have to laugh at myself now that I have finally accepted the obvious truth.
There is only one Son of God, and we are It. I give only to myself because there is no one else to give to. What is so hard to understand about that? Obviously, I did not want to accept that I am not special. I needed you to be different from me because that was the only way I could appear special.
How could I be special if we were all the same? And if we are different, separate, then it is impossible to understand that as I give to you, I give to myself. This is why for so long, I stubbornly refused to open my eyes and see what was right in front of me. Once I had seen the truth, I first felt like crying at the wasted time. Thank God I am eternal, and so that doesn’t matter. And anyway, time is an illusion.
I feel like laughing with joy to see that I am not surrounded by strangers.
These are my beloved brothers, all of whom are part of my One Self. They are the same ones who just recently were seen as enemies and competitors and the cause of all my grief, but no longer. It is a simple and natural thing to think first, “How can I be helpful?” when I recognize my brother is myself and my Love.
So, what is left to do? As I sit here in the solitude of this room, all is calm and peaceful. When I leave this pocket of peaceful solitude, the world we have created to distract us from the truth begins its job, and I get distracted! I start off with the idea that the one before me is my brother/my self, and before you know it, the ego part of my mind is insisting this guy is trying to steal my peace.
And for a little while, I am again warring with my brother, completely forgetting I war only with myself. But wait! It is different now because I know something I didn’t know before, and soon I am asking the Holy Spirit to help me see this differently.
This is what is left for me to do. I need to practice the truth. I need to forgive and forgive and forgive until I no longer choose anything but the truth. When I first accepted the truth, I was so disappointed to find out that there was more to do. I just couldn’t believe how easily I gave up my peace as soon as I let my guard down, and I went through a period of real depression because I didn’t see how I was ever going to do this.
Everyone and everything seemed to elicit a reaction from me.
And that elicited guilt, which just made it all the worse. But I kept at it, and now, instead of being upset that I have temporarily forgotten my identity, I am glad for the opportunity to look at and forgive error once more, knowing that this practice brings us closer to our truth. Now even my mistakes have gained great value for me as I see they are not sins but merely opportunities for remembering.
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for being the ever-present Voice for God within me. Thank you, Jesus, my brother, for overcoming the world so that I could know it can be done. And thank you for not abandoning what you started and for being with me always. Thank You, God, for creating me holy, perfect, and unassailable. And thank you for extending Yourself and so making me like You. Thank You for loving me always.
Contemplation 2025
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